SONG NOTES BY JOHN D. WILLIAMS

Simple Twist Of Fate

The World-Of -Love

"Simple Twist of Fate" is perhaps one of Dylan's most malleable songs, changing frequently in performances. What the narrator does on the docks and how he finally formulates his conclusions may differ. Of course the conclusion itself is always the same. He has lost the love of his life without ever fully experiencing that love.

In this song, Dylan conjures a world-of-love that the narrator lives in but cannot apprehend. The images in the song tumble from the sights and sounds of this world-of-love, with distant saxophones and penny arcades and when the mysterious She "drops a coin into the cup of a blind man at the gate", we know this act of tenderness only makes the suffering of the narrator more severe. In this world-of-love, it is possible to fall in love in a heartbeat to only lose it all in another.

The narrator's agony is further compounded by those who cannot comprehend this world-of- love and find it suspicious or "a sin". But the knowledge of this world is inside of him. And this feeling, incapacitating as it is and driving him to endless searching, allows him to also see beyond himself to the hidden reality of things, where objects become sacraments, and eternity happens every day.

But he lost the ring.

Dylan has noted his song writing process of this time as more conscious, less intuitive than previous. He attributed this new found ability to consciously compose songs to the tutelage of a painter in New York. Dylan has likewise described the songs on Blood On The Tracks as paintings. And it shows in the careful placement of the images, using words and rhythms almost like colors. There is a fragrance to them, a growing mysticism, the suggestion of travels in Europe, and with that, a body of literature. Dylan begins to take his literary influences more seriously in Blood On The Tracks and makes the point explicit in another song on the album that references Verlaine and Rimbaud.

And for the walking shoes that he has always inhabited, in the early days those of a Dust Bowl immigrant, later putting on the slippers of the world troubadour, he begins to try on the peasant thongs of the gypsy (which he will wear for several albums until he puts on the sandals of the wandering apostle in Slow Train Coming). — John D. Williams

You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go

Pastures of Plenty

"You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" ends the first side of the vinyl recording with a bouquet of evocative imagery and a fluttering delivery. The song is deceptively simple. The Dust Bowl tone of the title line is belied by the artful leaping and layering of pastoral images, where he sings of "crickets talking back and forth in rhyme", but it is his rhymes that mimic the calls of the crickets. The song therefor turns in on itself and becomes a riddle.

Most obvious in the riddle is that while he sings of his special lover in endearing (and enduring) terms, that she will leave him is without question. Behind the romping harmonica that opens the song lies the pit of despair, wretched love affairs. He explodes this revelation with a literary reference, notable because it marks his first where he is in full command of his allusion. Verlaine and Rimbaud shared an awkward but tempestuous homosexual relationship, ending with Verlaine's attempted murder of the young, symbolist poet with a gun.

Although the present she to whom Dylan sings is nothing like that, with love "more correct", what we know he knows, that she will be gone nonetheless. And the very pastures that capture their love will hold her memory.

Despite the Americanisms the song is filled with, there is a European feel to this song (and album), and one can almost smell the blossoming of Old World beauty. These fields he sings of are painted by Millet and the passions of the lovers he sings of are matched and overwhelmed by the passion of the land and sky itself. — John D. Williams

Meet Me In The Morning

The Sun As Sorrow Itself

"Meet Me In The Morning" begins the second side of the vinyl recording and Dylan returns to the farm and the blues. In "Meet Me In The Morning", Dylan appears to rewriting the more personal "Call Letter Blues" (released on the Bootleg Series Volume 2), recorded at the same time, into something no less emotional but a bit less autobiographical. Or at least, autobiographical sounding. The images on "Call Letter Blues" sound more vividly personal than the hound dogs and roosters in "Meet Me In The Morning" but there is no loss of the sense of loss in the song.

The pivotal image has shifted as well. From the walking man whose life brings no pleasure but rather cries from children and call girls, "Meet Me In The Morning" presents the sun as sorrow itself. Dylan's voice especially crackles as "They say the darkest hour is RIGHT before the dawn" but for the narrator, there is no dawn. There is no morning for any meeting and no meeting will happen. This is when she is away. When she is there may even be worse.

Dylan makes a metaphor of a metaphor. The sun sinks like a ship, he sings, crackling his voice as he did with the previous image of the sunrise (never to appear). And the sunset that slips into darkness is when he kisses her lips .

When the darkness wells within him. — John D. Williams

Lilly, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts

commedia del l'arte
[commedia del l'arte: a type of Italian comedy developed in the 16th century and
employing a stereotyped plot, improvised dialogue, and stock characters, as Pantaloon,
Harlequin, Columbine, etc.]

"Lilly, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" presents itself as the anomaly of Blood On The Tracks. Dylan himself  seemed surprised, stating that he had never written anything like it and that it was to him something medieval. And it is like an ancient song of courtship and loss in its sense of cloistered spaces and wood cut like characters driven by desire.

What makes the song anomalous to the album, however, is that whatever similarities it has with cyclic poems or L'Morte d'Arthur, and most importantly, to commedia del l'arte, its most clear and obvious similarities are to a television Western! Well, maybe an anti-hero movie Western... starring John Wesley Hardin.

This Jack of Hearts never makes a foolish move either. And like a commedia del l'arte character [see footnote], all Marcel Marceau (well, mostly), he glides through this two by four town with barely a word. Not quite a joker, he is most definitely a thief . And the trump card in the game of chance played by lovers triangled in the tale.

The plot is delightfully complex and ultimately unimportant. Taken literally, there are more holes in it than the one being drilled in the wall but who cares? This isn't a scenario after all but a miracle play.

Belying the familiar images of the robber baron land owner (or fat cat town boss) of Big Jim, the desperately unfulfilled wife (with passions only a bird in a gilded cage could feel) of Rosemary, and the working girl with a checkered past (hooker with a heart of gold) mistress of Lilly, is Dylan's robust, almost burlesque telling of the tale.

The characters may be briefly cast but they are convincingly played and more important they are roles. And simply being a role becomes their role in the song.

Dylan's European influences at the time evince themselves in Dylan's metaphors. Although the gambler and gambling is a popular American image, the card game Lilly plays suggests with quick strokes the card game as a metaphor for life. Where cards and cads, love and war, take place at a table (or on the stairs, in the case of the song) as in the genre paintings of George de la Tour. While the card image quickly places the characters as roles (the Jack of Hearts, of course, retaining his designation of the card itself), the stage they play on is two fold.

The song is a play within a play, another European metaphor, and neither stage is more or less real than the other. It is easy to imagine the town being moved off like so many store fronts on a Hollywood back lot as the song ends. While the back stage manager's fretfulness is reminiscent of Truffaut's film crew anxieties in Day for Night, his movie in a movie, which plays out this metaphor as well.

(Of course, almost without saying, the motif finds a cultural landmark in Shakespeare's Macbeth although Dylan isn't aiming here).

Neither stage is more than the illusion they create. The characters are no more real than their thoughts.

And yet they play as solidly as Gunsmoke. Now THAT is an illusion! — John D. Williams

Shelter From The Storm

The Razor's Edge

Dylan has stated that the songs on Blood On The Tracks share a similarity in that in them there is "a code" and that none of them have "a sense of time". It is not clear what Dylan means by this "code" and some have followed the lead of Dylan garbage inspector, A. J. Weberman, that Dylan's songs form a sort of encrypted autobiography.

This process seems rather laborious to me and frankly, a pain in the ass.

I suspect this "code" has more to do with the structure of the songs. But precisely how Dylan conceived that structure is anybody's guess. His does juxtapose the idea of this code with his statement that these songs have "no sense of time".

Actually, these songs are filled with time, but that is not really a contradiction of what Dylan has said. In all of Blood On The Tracks, the past, present and future exist side by side. The singer may be lamenting the loss of his true love and yet she may be with him all the while.

Even the reeling narrative of "Tangled Up In Blue" begins with a memory and ends with a point of view. The events of the song suggest chronology but each moment in the song seems to harken to another moment, until all is finally ignited by the words of "an Italian poet from the 16th century", whose presence is as immediate as burning coal.

But if any song on Blood On The Tracks song sounds codified or lacking a sense of time, "Shelter From the Storm" exceeds all of them in these qualities. It is a narrative without story. It is the story of a lifetime, or at least, another lifetime, and the narrator is "a creature void of form". Which would place him at his genesis, and the beginning of his spiritual quest.

The journey of this spirit or soul is defined by its suffering and the suffering of those it sees. But with each episode, the soul returns to the mysterious She who provides a shelter to this storm.

This soul is suffering personified and while the juxtaposition of the baby's wail (tenderly conveyed as "like a morning dove) with "old men with broken teeth stranded without love" seems to take us through cradle to grave, the song doesn't end here. Picking up the Old Testament reference which begins the song from the first chapter of Genesis, where the earth is "void of form", the narrator concludes his first journey with the New Testament, where this suffering soul has reached the spiritual suffering that transcends the self. This suffering is now the Passion of the definitive Man of Sorrows, whose clothes are gambled away, and for salvation, he receives a "lethal dose". The unspoken name of the "hill top village" must, of course, be Golgotha and the reference is unmistakably to Jesus Christ.

But the journey has not ended. No longer void of form, he is now ultimately formed, and begins his lifetime but in a "another land", now newly searching, this time for the divine counterpart to suffering's pain, which is beauty. Beauty is suffering but with form, difficult to grasp, for it walks a "razor's edge" and only few obtain it. For it is eternal.

The beauty of the mysterious She is of eternity and born with the creator of eternity. And her beauty, like eternity, is divine, because it is suffering's ameliorative, or antidote: mercy.

"Come in, she said, I'll give you shelter from the storm." -- John D. Williams

Buckets Of Rain

The Conclusion

"Buckets of Rain" ends the album and reflects the conundrum presented by "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go", which ends the first side of the vinyl. The conundrum, or riddle, is "how can something this good be so bad?"

Both songs are deceptively simple and Pete Hamill, in his liner notes seems to apologize for the lyrics not being like Dante, and one wonders how Dante even got brought up.

But there is a reason. Blood On The Tracks presents as an Old World album despite its rife Americanisms, and there is a clear sense of Dylan's literary preoccupations at the time. Of course, it is more than simply "literary". It is a bold endeavor to translate life into art and as such, it is a painful, emotional album.

But the pain is articulated through art, to make it "more on target, more direct" (to quote a line from another song on the album) than simply the miseries of one man's life.

Dylan approached the album more or less consciously in the writing of the songs and shows the discipline of study that never falls into preciousness or pedantry.

Charlie Patton would never be Dante and Dante would never wail those kinds of blues. But Dylan makes the gulf between the two much smaller than might have been previously possible to even imagine.

"Buckets of Rain" finalizes Dylan's conclusion to the riddle. From the rain, the tears, the moonbeams, the oak-like spirit and those spirits that left like smoke, the grotesque, the sexual, the love, the misery, "Life is sad, life is a bust, all you can do is do what you must. You do what you must do and you do it well". Does she see he does it for her too?
Ultimately, it doesn't matter.

The song says goodbye without ever uttering the word. — John D. Williams

Tracking the Blood -- an essay by Ralph Carusillo, July 7, 1995
 

A Generation Lost In Space...

In 1975, an album was released that restored to listener's ears the dormant song writing prowess of a man named Bob Dylan. For the half decade previous, Dylan had teased his audience with the sounds of yesteryear on his tours with The Band, while at the same time, disappointing many them on with newer albums such as "Self-Portrait", "New Morning" and "Planet Waves". Dylan, delighting his concert audience with his greatest hits "Like A Rolling Stone", "Just Like A Woman", "Ballad Of A Thin Man", "Blowin' In The Wind" and "Rainy Day Woman #12 and 35", naming only a few, ended up only leaving his audience pining. Here was Dylan the performer but where was Dylan the songwriter? On the albums listed above, there were, of course, songs which contained bits and pieces reminiscent of "classic Dylan", whatever that quality is that moves his audience. But the lack of that in so many of the other songs left doubt in the minds of those who had hoped to follow Dylan forever. Had Dylan lost his touch? Had whatever waters of creativity he once had once drawn from now dried up? Was he worth waiting on?

The Dylanites were about to be rewarded for their patience and diligence.

"Blood On The Tracks" demonstrated what was so special about Bob Dylan. Going back to his folk roots, Dylan wove a collection of songs as grand and austere as any before . Songs such as "Tangled Up In Blue" and "Idiot Wind" showed the Dylanites that, yes, the man was back -- with a vengeance. To the fans, this album was well worth the wait. Even the general audience quietly packed these songs in their consciousness as classics from the man who had apparently faded from the forefront of popular music.

To those who were avid Dylanites, I being one of them (in terms of appreciation of his work, not in the amount of Dylan items I own), one has to wonder about a curious piece of information in the history of this album. The record was due for release Christmas 1974, but Dylan put the kibosh on this, stating a short time before that release date that he was "unsatisfied" with the record. "The songs could have sounded differently....".

A Question Remaining...

When I read this quote in the fine book "Hard Rain", by Tim Riley, I wondered what had caused Dylan to change his mind. Perhaps the artist is never truly satisfied by his or her work, no matter how colossal or beautiful? And perhaps this is the seed of inspiration, of motivation, the impetus that keeps the creative mind churning. But the original question remains, "Why?". "Why this, not that?" In many cases, in so many artistic puzzles, the answer remains a mystery. Still, with some time at hand, the right resources, and a question that keeps spinning around in the head, the best thing one can do is.... answer it! Or at least try.

Those who have in their possession the two ("legal") Dylan box sets can attempt to do this. Along with the official  release of Blood on the Tracks, several of the alternate recordings, discarded from the "final cut", find release on Dylan's "Bootleg Series 1-3" and "Biograph".

Following Dylan's pronouncement, there were six songs on "Blood On The Tracks" that were re-recorded over the Christmas holiday, 1974, in Hibbing, Minnesota, "Tangled Up In Blue", "You're A Big Girl Now", "Simple Twist Of Fate", "Idiot Wind", "If You See Her, Say Hello" and "Lily, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts", with some local
musicians.

Only four of the ten songs recorded survived from the original New York sessions: "Tangled Up In Blue", "Idiot Wind", "You're A Big Girl Now", and "If You See Her, Say Hello". There are extreme differences between the NY versions and the Minnesota versions, distinct enough to make me consider what had caused Dylan to ponder, to be dissatisfied with a seemingly completed album, and to change his mind.

What did he hear in these songs? What are the differences between the original New York recordings from the later Minnesota recordings?

Considering The Source...

Let's listen. Song by song. In all instances, I will describe the New York version first (noted as NY), then the Minnesota version (noted as MN), noting the difference within the Minnesota version's description.

"If You See Her, Say Hello"(NY), as released on "The Bootleg Series, Volume 3" comes across as a pining for lost  love. A love song of extreme sadness, the singer misses the lover he once had, regretting what he has lost but trying to keep an adult attitude towards the separation, only to find himself bitter and morose, the brave face slowly
crumbling, exposing the nerve that still pulses for her....

"If You See Her, Say Hello"(MN): as the official cut, the singer doesn't seem as much in the throes of the separation. A bit of time has passed. He seems to have taken a more philosophical attitude towards the inevitable break-up, understanding why it happened. You can almost picture the two coming together and being friends, friends with a special bond between them. Almost...

"You're A Big Girl Now" (NY), as released on Biograph, volume 2: the singer in this song seems hurt and humiliated at taking the lover for granted. He must now pay the price for keeping her at a distance, seeing her with others, regretting his insolence, realizing too late what he had and what he won't ever have again, seeing that this woman had so much to give, so much to offer. Passing that up will haunt him forever....

"You're A Big Girl Now"(MN): here, the singer has sadness replaced by a begrudging respect, a "pat on the back" attitude. He seems to be in a position of nurturing, watching this woman grow in stature, maybe sad in a way a parent becomes when their children move away, proud but empty, knowing this time must come. Stated earlier, the MN
version is on the album.

"Tangled Up In Blue" (NY), as released on "The Bootleg Series, Volume 2": the singer has a pondering remembrance of the trail taken through life, a remembrance one might have while sitting alone, thumbing through a scrapbook, the tales on the road told in a way that has the events taking their toll on the memory of the singer. Fond memories do not abound in this tale, though they are expounded on deliberately, with each word tumbled and tossed softly for any and every morsel of symbolism....

"Tangled Up In Blue"(MN): the singer, in this telling, gives the impression of a winter evening, the family all home and cozy, together in front of a crackling fire, the children listening to stories of their parents and/or grandparents, where memories are exposed for their emotional impact, usually displaying the happiness of just being able to live a life like that. Again, the MN recording made it to the album.

Someone's Got It In For Me...

"Idiot Wind" is the song that is the most difficult to come to terms with, regardless of the version. I'm reminded of the remark Dylan once made to Mary Travers (of Peter, Paul, and Mary fame), who on her radio show told him how much the album was enjoyed: " A lot of people tell me they enjoyed that album. It's hard for me to relate to that-- I mean, people enjoying that type of pain....".

But if I may go into another direction for a bit, when I read this quote, I always ask myself "Why would he record it as an album if he doesn't want you to hear it, enjoy it, or buy it? Why give to an audience that type of pain? How are they supposed to react?" I can feel the pain in this song, the most pain-riddled song on the released album, by far. To understand what caused, what triggered the pain in this song is impossible. One can only hope to acknowledge its hurt. That is all I can do for this song in terms of my reaction to it. Joy is a blacklisted emotion in this song.

In the NY version of "Idiot Wind", as released on "The Bootleg Series, Volume 2": the singer is lamenting a lost love, a lost time, a vanishing era, a person using insults not only to his lover but to himself, as well. And we know when people are angry, distraught, depressed, sometimes we'll try to hurt those the closest the most. We use this as a defense mechanism, a method to release the rage or guilt that wells inside us. The singer blames himself as much, if not more, for the loss of the lover. There is a tenderness to this song.

Critics at this time pointed to this song and others on the album, notably "You're A Big Girl Now" as being about  Dylan's marital woes. In response to a comment made concerning "You're a Big Girl Now" as being about his wife, Dylan said: "I read that this was supposed to be about my wife. I wish somebody would ask me first before they go ahead and print stuff like that. I mean, it couldn't be about anybody else but my wife, right? Stupid and misleading jerks sometimes these interpreters are. Fools, they limit you to their own unimaginative mentality....".

Basically, the songs could be about anybody or anything, the relation of two objects within their own sphere, their own universe. Who would want to be pigeon-holed like that in their art, anyway? Art is too broad a concept to narrow down, but our need for THE ANSWER is too strong, but also debilitating.

The singer feels regret, but seems to still feel strongly and lovingly about the lover. The passing of this relationship is accepted, barely. It's as if the singer knows there is no other recourse to be taken to save it. The song sounds like a goodbye, but only in the tangible sense.

The MN recording of "Idiot Wind", released on Blood On The Tracks.... well, here we seem to get the initial reaction to the break-down of the relationship. The singer uses the delivery of the words, the baring of rage and pain but, unlike the NY version, here he means every word. The singer is fully accusing, leaning into the lover's face, pouring on the insults and dumping the burden of blame into her lap. Vindictive is the assault, a barrage of hatred, a continual finger-pointing. Here he feels almost raped of his emotions, ridiculed by the lover's actions, humiliated to the point of being backed into a sentient corner with nowhere to go but for the jugular.

For "Idiot Wind" to be realized as such distinct emotions, in its two versions its Jekyll and Hyde personalities so fully realized, is astonishing and frightening. The words in the later recording are changed, somewhat, to embellish the feeling it generates but, for the song to contain both the sedate and bestial sides of personality tells us something of our own emotions. Humans are both the most noble and the most contemptible of creatures. This song reminds me of that duality all too well.

Why...?

Returning to the original question, why did Bob Dylan decide to re-record some songs for the album "Blood On The Tracks"?

My conclusions: every poem, song, story, any written piece of work exposes a piece of our soul. This may be conscious or unconscious. The difference between the two is the former can be controlled. John Lennon, for example, lived this as a way of life, peeling off layers of his soul until we saw him bare, stripped of all pretense and disguise. Most of us do this without thinking twice when we write letters. In most of those cases, we do this on purpose. How else to tell how we're doing and besides, those we write to know us very well, so we have no reason to hide. In the worlds of music and poetry, however, evasiveness is a requisite, expected of the best of them.

Within the realms of music and poetry, there is a certain amount the artist reveals to the audience. This comes mostly in the form of "clues", pieces to decipher in the audience's quest to "figure you out". This, I feel, is one of the reasons we enjoy these media: the mystery, the intrigue, the connection, bonding, we gain from gathering these "clues", the closeness we gain by solvi ng each little puzzle. There are times, though, when the artist, too caught up in the creative release, plotting these mysteries, will expose more than they want to. Sometimes they won't ever catch the error, thereby releasing too much of themselves to the audience, who will devour it, then crave more. Their expectations, if larger than the "chef" (singer, writer, painter, etc.) can handle or give, can consume the artist to the point of nonexistence. A shell, the husk, could remain, withered and rotted, but the soul would be gone, scattered to the limp waters of vicarious thrill, from fine dining to food for the fishes.

Perhaps Dylan, consciously or subconsciously, seeing with his eyes (or his mind's eye), saw this in the New York recording of the album, "Blood On The Tracks". Perhaps he saw he gave too much away, made himself too accessible, too vulnerable. And he re-recorded those songs which peered too much into his head and heart. In his career, Dylan has been able to let the listeners know as little as possible of each song, bringing the onus of understanding to the listener. He came closest to slipping with "Blood On The Tracks".